Between 1984 and 2003, New Zealand undertook comprehensive market-oriented economic reforms. In this paper, we use Census data to examine how the internal mobility of Māori compares to that of Europeans in New Zealand in the period after these reforms. It is often suggested that Māori are less...

Many immigrants are overqualified in their first job after arrival in the host country. Education-occupation mismatch can affect the economic integration of immigrants and the returns to education and experience. The extent of this problem has been measured in recent years by means of micro...

Many immigrants are overqualified in their first job after arrival in the host country. Education-occupation mismatch can affect the economic integration of immigrants and the returns to education and experience. The extent of this problem has been measured in recent years by means of micro...

Data from the Household Economic Survey (HES) are used to examine the activities undertaken by New Zealand youth from 1985 to 2004. Evidence is presented on both labour market and education activities and the intersection of the two. The paper begins by examining cross-sectional patterns in...

In this study we investigate Auckland's economic performance relative to other large cities, to medium-sized urban centres and to small towns and rural area using data from the Income Survey to examine hourly earnings and other measures of labour productivity and utilisation. Our results tell a...

Twenty-three percent of New Zealand's population is foreign-born and forty percent of migrants have arrived in the past ten years. Newly arriving migrants tend to settle in spatially concentrated areas and this is especially true in New Zealand. This paper uses census data to examine the...

This paper examines the impact of a reduction in the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 on alcohol use, and alcohol-related hospitalisations and vehicular accidents among teenagers. We use both a difference-in-differences approach and a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...

This paper investigates the relationship between individual labour market outcomes, household income and expenditure, and inequality and poverty in New Zealand using detailed data from the 1983/84 – 2003/04 Household Economic Survey (HES). We begin by discussing and summarising measures of...

The 1990s saw a significant sell-off of state houses in New Zealand, while the 2000s saw a material rebuilding of the state house inventory. We provide in-depth documentation of a rich spatially-defined dataset of the stock, acquisition and disposal of New Zealand’s state houses since the...

This paper uses data from the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) to estimate household saving in New Zealand between 2004-2006. Comprehensive data on wealth is collected biannually in SoFIE and we calculate household saving by examining how wealth has changed over time. We find that...